UKC

The first bouldering World Cup is this weekend. No Brits made it through to semi's which was a shame though Nathan Philips missed the cut by one place in a very respectable 21st. That put him ahead of some extremely talented climbers like Keita Watabe, Sean Bailey, Gabriele Moroni, Dmitri Sharafutiov Alex Megos, Martin Stranik, Ty Landman and Sean McColl.

In the women's Leah Crane and Shauna are both through in 11th and 13th place. Stasa Gejo and Jesse Pilz are joint leaders ahead of Miho and Akiyo.

Semi finals tomorrow at 10am on Youtube.

youtube.com/watch?v=mmGCe7MiEE4&

Cheers stp, you wouldn't know of any channels showing the quali's? Probably unlikely. I always think it's a shame not see them, as it allows you to get a view on the up and coming stars of tomorrow, e.g. Japanese youth squad etc, as there were no new names in the mens top 30 and as you say, some incredible talent failed to make the semis.

Same with the women's pretty much and a great result for Leah. Surprising to see almost all the US ladies so far down.

Nat '5 tops' Coleman looks to be set for a good year. Saw him in the US nationals. Beast

Qualis are almost never live streamed. 

I've watched the tail end of them on Friday evening live couple of times, since the Munich stadium is just down the road from where I work. 

It's really, really unexciting. Qualis - unlike semis & finals - aren't run in reverse order so the likes of Shauna, Janja etc are up first. By the time you get to the tail end you're "down" to the likes of the local youth squad who've been put in there by their coaches to start gaining some experience in top level comps. And even though they're really good climbers the gulf between them and the big names is huge. You can stand there for an hour and barely see a bonus hold reached, let alone a top.

OnBouldering.com has some snippets from qualification rounds. From this comp it's just a video made up from Instagram posts. But otherwise as Alan says, though the way it is does mean you don't get to see most of the competitors.

Good semis this morning. Well done Shauna for getting through to the final, and also an impressive return to form for Leah, who looked to be climbing better than I've seen her for a long time, finishing in the top 10.

The running order seemed really odd due to the vast gulf in difficulty between qualification groups. One group had a flash contest, two tops in a limited number of tries got you through to the semi’s for the other group.

This must really put some of the qualifying athletes at a disadvantage in terms of energy expenditure and skin loss.

Somewhat ironic that the clocks would fail in Switzerland, of all places!

Shauna just seemed a little short of 'match-fitness', so  more hesitant than usual to commit to dynamic sequences. I'm sure she'll regain her usual assertive self as the season progresses.

Mens 2 was incredible

For the first time in what seems like 2-3yrs, the men’s finals where more interesting than the women’s.

I was chatting to a friend about the clocks. It seems amazing that they fail at all. I mean every phone, tablet, PC, and most watches have reliable stop watches, so reliable I've never even heard of one malfunctioning.

Yeah, a 5 point dyno in slo-mo:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bhj8SnojrHc/

And pretty amusing that Alexey did the whole thing statically.

Two words, 'Manu Cornu'. Outrageous

What a final....

and Tomoa flashed it!

Reminiscent of last year when he hung off the top hold with one hand, turned round to get the crowd going with his other hand, and then fell off before matching.

Still love watching him though

Yeah, it's the sort of problem that was almost purpose built for Tomoa.

I thought it was really interesting the way all the men were really powerful climbers, but in quite different ways. Tomoa definitely has his own unique style.

Show boat of the season in the season opener!

Swiss timing was mentioned quite a few times at the venue

'No Brits' made it through, though a couple of women did.  Cough cough.........

He did actually mention Leah and Shauna in the 2nd paragraph

Ahhh but as 'women', not 'Brits'.

Why are highlights so short? I'd like a 30 minute one not just 3 minutes. 

Oops. Apologies. That didn't come out right.

Because they are a news highlights edit.

I imagine that a longer edit, like 30 mins, would be popular too though. That could capture the build up to the key moments much better. And it's still a heck of a lot shorter that 3.5 hours which I imagine is far too long for many. So it could open up the comps to more people.

25 minutes would fit into most people's lunch break and still probably have enough time to include the best attempts on each problem from all finalists. 

Also think highlights should be grouped by problem not competitor. That way you get to see the difference in ability and style together, possibly even split screen it... X flashed it and Y failed, here's how they compare. 

Agree - on the highlights edit - maybe even an hour to watch in two sittings.

Whilst the men / women separately as with Meiringen and some of last year's finals is good in that you get to see every attempt (well, every one where the camera is pointing at the climber and the stream is working...), 3.5 hours is a big time investment. 

No mention in any of the write ups for Emily Phillips.

Just 15 and her first World Cup but a very decent 47th, 3rd placed British woman.

Interesting trivia from Eddie Fowke:

Meiringen, Switzerland. Perhaps best known as the death place of Sherlock Holmes

There's actually now a bunch of highlights videos for Meiringen from different filmmakers.

See:

https://onbouldering.com/highlights-and-thoughts-from-meiringen-2018/

The Beta Routesetting Youtube channel have highlights and analysis in 3 videos: semis, Men's final and Women's final. Total time is about 50 mins.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0iiyed14XtRqxOcGgwSHDw

Cheers for those I'll have a look later 

I believe he survived....

Thanks! I'll have a gander